Tony Federico "Italian Polaroid"

Tony Federico was at home in the circuit of Milano Fashion Week since he was a teenager. He began his career as an assistant, manager and driver for models and fashion designers. The backstage of the prêt-à-porter industry was his home and workplace since the 90s. Over the years, Tony Federico began to professionalize his passion for photography and soon became a part of the industry. His clients were the major magazines, as well as the designers and labels themselves. He photographed models on the catwalk, shot videos and staged wonderful, expensive and unwearable clothes in the studio or at exotic locations. His colleagues were young, had money and were handsome and sexy. In the meantime, Tony Federico himself had his assistants and it was constantly going up. His field of activity now went far beyond Milan and so he experienced years full of travelling, parties and the glamour of the international fashion scene.

But around 2010 things changed in Tony Federico's life - he woke up from a frenzy, as he calls it himself. He had a second divorce behind him, no longer had a permanent home and was increasingly disconnected from reality. He was now over 40 y.o. and maybe it was a midlife crisis, maybe it was a survival instinct - because not everyone survived this constant ecstasy, the self-indulgence that is the attraction of this industry. So Tony Federico decided to start a new life! He left everything behind and moved to Berlin to start anew.

Along this path, over the years, this Polaroid series was created. It was not made for a client, but as a free project. The Polaroid camera Tony Federico carried with him all these years did not deliver perfect pictures and there was practically no market for this kind of image - which makes them all the more important for the photographer himself, who can tell the story of his journey through the glittering world of fashion on the basis of this series.
Tony Federico shares some of these memories with us through his show at Kaffeemitte.

 

All motives are available as 59,4 x 72,2 cm fine art print.

Hahnemühle Photo Matt Fibre 200 g/qm
Stamped & numbered in Berlin